We are looking for submissions for a panel on “Nature and Violence in Representations of the Urban World” within the annual conference of the English Department of the University of Bucharest, titled: “Tales of War: Expressions of Conflict and Reconciliation” (conference website: http://www.english-unib.ro/events.html). The conference is scheduled to take place June 2-4, 2011 and will be hosted by the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest, Romania.

Today one can hardly define environment by excluding the urban dimension. People seem to have become isolated from the natural world to which they used to belong and often times this alienation has not come without violence. These destructive forces have not always come against nature but also against people themselves. Moreover, the process of accelerated globalization the world has become engaged in has brought along changes in how people manage their relationship to nature. We would like to investigate colonial legacies as well as the impact of globalization on individuals, communities, nations and transnational collectivities in terms of their relationship to their multidimensional environments.

This is intended as an interdisciplinary panel open to scholars, MA and PhD level graduate students who specialize or are interested in:
• Ecocriticism
• American studies
• Indigenous studies
• British cultural studies
• Post-colonialism
• African American studies
• Urban fiction
• Film studies and visual art
• Trauma Studies

We also welcome contributions that analyze the impact of globalization on the representations of nature in Central and East European countries.

Videoconferencing facilities may be provided upon request.

Please send 200-word abstracts along with a short biographical note (including: name, institutional affiliation, and email address) to ancaroncea@gmail.com and radulescu.ruxandra@yahoo.com by 15 February 2011.

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